


and i like you

by smudgedfreckles



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Driving, Feelings, M/M, Song: 400 Lux (Lorde), the intimacy of vulnerability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:13:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25879480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smudgedfreckles/pseuds/smudgedfreckles
Summary: The first time Travis took Nolan driving was after their season ended. Careening out of a playoff spot, losing sight of reality. Nolan clambered into Travis’ passenger seat. Travis didn’t say a word, just drove and drove and drove and Nolan stuck his head out of the window and screamed his heart out ‘till it hurt. Lightheaded and alive, emotions pooling out by his feet like syrup, chest hollow from having nothing left to say, to feel.
Relationships: Travis Konecny/Nolan Patrick
Comments: 2
Kudos: 44





	and i like you

**Author's Note:**

> this is entirely based on 400 lux by lorde–if you want the full experience i highly recommend listening to the song as well as reading this

Travis is driving. Nolan never drives, just sits quiet with his feet on the dash, soft sedated music wafting through the speakers of Travis’ car. Looks out the window, always open no matter how cold it is. Wind on his face, in his hair. Squints when they’re going fast. There’s an aux, but no reason to use it when the prickly nighttime radio fits the time of night much better. It’s smooth classical music sometimes, or late night jazz, or, when the night is clear enough, something from another part of the world drifts through. A secret, just for them, that they can’t understand. 

Two in the morning, going nowhere, just in the car with the windows open, breathing the same air. Killing time, like there’s anything better to do. They’re driving aimlessly, but it’s the same kind of route every time, snaking through the city to see the lights off, Philadelphia quiet for once. Out of breath from a day of passionate existence, alive for nobody and everybody. Alive for the stragglers and the lovers and the dreamers, a fitting description of anyone who’s ever rooted themselves in the city. Then out, out, farther until it’s just stretches of expressway and trees, in the company of exactly nobody. Alone, but together.

Travis is glad he’s alone, here, with Nolan. 

The first time Travis took Nolan driving was after their season ended. Careening out of a playoff spot, losing sight of reality. Nolan clambered into Travis’ passenger seat. Travis didn’t say a word, just drove and drove and drove and Nolan stuck his head out of the window and screamed his heart out ‘till it hurt. Lightheaded and alive, emotions pooling out by his feet like syrup, chest hollow from having nothing left to say, to feel.

Nolan feels like that a lot sometimes, like he’s emptier, missing something. But Travis picks him up after the losses, drives him anywhere, everywhere, Nolan somehow at home in Travis’ car. Travis drives by muscle memory, almost, holding the steering wheel casually, eyes not on the road but on the sky ahead of him. At peace. It’s when they reach the route back that they talk.

Once they turn around, and only then, Travis asks him how the sky tastes today. Nolan tells him yellow, or blue, or red sometimes, and Travis listens, as Nolan digs deep in to the hollow of his chest to figure out where he is in time and what’s going on. With him. Or anything, really, fumbling with the ache he knows but can’t pronounce.

And Travis tells him the stars sound staticky today, or loud, or they’re crying, pulls from his hollowed out self the scraps of anger, fear, sadness, bubbling and fizzing as they lose steam. They’ll never talk like this during the day, not unless they’re drunk enough to be brave. But they can be brave, here, in this car, because they’re alone. With each other, but alone, their hearts spilling through the seams, out of the cracks in their skin, fingertips. 

Travis loves the empty roads where everything’s the same, always, because it makes everything around him louder, things once imperceptible become beacons of thought in the shared air of the car. And the everything around him is Nolan, whose emotions, puddling by his feat, are being sifted and read like tracing scales of a fish, gentle and shiny.

“There’s nobody who has ever believed in me enough to let me fail,” Nolan says, “and nobody who likes me honestly enough to care,” quiet but loud as ever in the car. There’s sadness in his voice, but it’s contemplative. Like he’s noticed something and wonders why. 

“You could quit right now and I’d drive you around the world every night, still,” Travis says, soft, voice almost hoarse from the weight of the words. Nolan smiles out the window, tells the night thank you, the words traveling across the car to plant themselves on Travis’ cheek, like a kiss.

_And I like you,_ Travis thinks.

Nolan shivers in the night air, cold, in the mid-November of the city, hands bunched up in the hoodie he’s wearing. Travis turns the heating on without a word. It’s horribly inefficient, with the windows open, but it’s like clockwork. Like how on the way back home, they stop by the Wawa, orange juice for Travis and a Heath bar for Nolan. Travis waits outside, watching Nolan as he leaves and as he comes back, like he’s making sure Nolan is real. A comforting routine in the sweet sadness that drifts in and out of the car, always, a precious gift of thought and comfort only accessible at this time of night.

Nolan usually drifts off some on the ride back, late night haze putting him to sleep. Travis never complains, just hums along to the quiet music, the background noise a deep lull. 

It’s like this, in the car, the protection of the raw night that is so opposite of the Way Things Are normally. In the daytime, Travis talks at a hundred miles an hour, never stoping to take a breath, feelings dribbling out the sides of his mouth, spat across the room, tears, salty, sweet. Shallow, but there, always, the deeper parts revealed in the night. Travis can air it out honestly, with himself, see himself in the day. Look into a mirror and know who he’s talking to. Nolan listens. 

And at night, everything that’s been compressed behind Nolan’s temples, his hurt, anger, love, running through his veins like molasses, seeps out, eels slithering in the night only alive because they’re invisible. But Travis listens to Nolan’s slips with vulnerability, adding some of his own, easy for him, so Nolan’s not the only one. Not the only one doing the hard thing, being honest. Nolan is trying to be better at that. It’s easier in the car, tipsy in the night.

Travis is turning left back into the city on the way home, wherever that really is. Philadelphia is home, of course, but so is the house back in Port Stanley and so is this car, with Nolan in it, head resting on the edge of the opened window, hair dampened from the humidity. Cheeks red in the cold. Hollow, run ragged from the day and the press of thought and feeling and pain behind the front of his skull. But open now, drunk on the night and easing into a sleepy smile Travis can see out of the corner of his eye. 

Travis, too, is hollowed out, the constant drip-drip-drip of emotion out of him all day. His energy isn’t up forever, and by this time he’s exhausted any thought or feeling manageable. He can’t be anything but honest to the bone, now, nothing left to hide the corners of his brain or the way his eyes drag on the rearview mirror.

Coming home is driving without thinking, at this point, left, right, two blocks, road closed, right again. Looking at the stars in the sky. Hung out just for them, the two of them. Today they sound like an empty arena and skates on ice and murmurs and the stretch you make when you wake up in the morning. Nolan says the sky tastes purple, red around the edges. Sweet and soft, just before it spoils.

Honesty is difficult, hard to get empty like this, but it’s simple. Uncomplicated. Feelings are there, or they aren’t. It only takes bravery to bring them to the surface.

Nolan likes to be awake on the way back to their apartment building, the last bits of the sleeping city before he goes to sleep himself. Hurt has been exhausted now, so instead Nolan tells Travis that the ice cream place they like has a different sign and that someone stole one of the outside chairs and that the game banners are starting to be put up. It makes him feel a little more normal, separate from his ravaged, hollow self, screaming out the window on I-95. Nolan likes to go to sleep normal, so he doesn’t have to dream about what he didn’t say. 

“I wish I could sleep without feeling like the city is eating me alive,” Travis mentions, offhand in a way that isn’t offhand at all, purposeful purging of emotion in the night, “I love the city but she can’t love me back,” and Travis is right; the city is merciless, never steady in her feelings, slave to the passion of loyalty and sin. Likes you one day and hates you the next.

“You’re a part of her, she likes you unconditionally like the way you like hockey; angry, never letting go,” Nolan says, tongue like lead from the burble of emotions in his throat. Slow moving but there nonetheless, safe to say in the darkness of the parking garage where faces are shrouded in the shadow.

_And I like you_ , Nolan thinks.

_And I like you_ , Travis thinks as they get out of the car, walk into their apartment building, side by side, shoulders bumping a little now, tired from the long hours of the day, Nolan’s cheeks still red from the November air and hair disheveled from the wind.

_And I like you,_ Nolan thinks as they get to Travis’ apartment on the third floor, Travis running his hand through his hair and yawning, exhausted but shoulders relaxed, unlocking his door, quietly, like he’ll wake Nolan up.

_And I like you,_ they think, eyes meeting for the first time that night, honest and raw in the dim glow of the lights in the hallway. Emotions melting together in a sludge at their feet, sweet like honey. A brush of the cheek, hair behind an ear, breath close. The intimacy of vulnerability, heavy on their chests like the weight of a head on a shoulder. In the hallway, alone, together, a tender embrace with the knowledge that nothing else matters, here, in this moment. 

A voice mumbles, “ _I’d like it if you stayed,_ ” somewhere between the heart and the emptiness of lungs and lips and a door closes, three weeks late, after being cradled in the hollows of the chest, pressing outwards and begging for release. Two sets of padded feet walking slow. Drunk on the raw night; they’ll remember in the morning.

Honesty is simple, but it’s brave. 

**Author's Note:**

> i am also on twitter dot com at smudgedfreckles, come yell about the flyers with me :)


End file.
